With less than a month remaining before the Obama
Administration’s Fiscal Year 2013 budget release, Los
Alamos National Laboratory officials are bracing for what
is expected to be a massive cut to its biggest project: the
Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement-Nuclear
Facility. The multi-billion-dollar project that will replace
the lab’s aging Chemistry and Metallurgy Research facility
has come under fire in recent months, both from Congress
and from government watchdog groups like the Project on
Government Oversight and the Los Alamos Study Group.
Although lab and NNSA officials haven’t said anything
publicly about the project, lab officials are privately
expecting the worst when it comes to funding for the
project, which is estimated to cost between $3.7 and $5.8
billion. “We’re not expecting funding for CMRR,” one
official told NW&M Monitor. “Right now, we’re planning
to go without.”

Though the Administration’s intentions are unclear, a
decision to cut funding for the planned facility could allow
the National Nuclear Security Administration to stagger its
two biggest projects, the CMRR-NF and the Uranium
Processing Facility planned for the Y-12 National Security
Complex, or do away with the CMRR-NF project altogether.
Either way, as a key piece of the Obama Administration’s
plan to modernize the nation’s weapons complex
and nuclear stockpile, any pullback on funding for CMRRNF
would certainly draw protests from Congressional
Republicans. The Administration pledged $88 billion from
FY2012 to FY2021 to maintain and modernize the complex,
with construction of the CMRR-NF and UPF the
centerpieces of the plan. In FY2012 budget projections, the
Administration said it expected to spend $300 million on
CMRR-NF in FY2012 and FY2013, but Congress had
already begun to balk at the price tag, providing just $200
million in FY2012 with explicit instructions prohibiting
the start of preliminary construction activities. Previously,
the Senate Appropriations Committee had directed the
NNSA to consider staggering construction of CMRR-NF
and UPF. “The eventual demise of CMRR-NF has been
inevitable, given its lack of justification and astronomical
cost,” said Greg Mello, the director of the Los Alamos
Study Group. Mello’s organization has parallel lawsuits
that contend that NNSA hasn’t fully analyzed alternatives
to building CMRR-NF. “The initial costs were low-balled
and unrealistic,” Mello said.With Limited Funds, a Choice

Initially estimated to cost $375 million, the current projected
price tag for the project is between $3.7 and $5.8
billion. A firm cost estimate for the project isn’t expected
until the end of this year at the earliest, and Congress
recently declined to provide funding for the project to
begin preliminary construction activities in Fiscal Year
2012; the facility is expected to be fully operational in
2023. The facility would provide space for analytical
chemistry and vault space for plutonium storage, which
would free up space in the lab’s Plutonium Facility to
increase the production of plutonium pits. One industry
official suggested that CMRR-NF’s relatively limited
mission could be its downfall. “When you’re talking about
UPF and CMRR-NF, there’s no comparison,” the official
told NW&M Monitor. “UPF, almost all of it is operations
space and you’ve got to replace the 9212 complex. With
CMRR-NF, there’s only two programmatic operational
functions—an analytical lab and vault space for plutonium.
Everything else is support space, so it’s not hard to see
why there are questions about it.”

It’s unclear how the Administration will choose to pursue
the project, but some industry officials have suggested that
design of the facility could be completed during FY2012
with funds that have already been appropriated—and
potentially used when the budget environment is more
friendly. That strategy would also appear to fall in line
with a “staggering” approach involving major NNSA
construction work, allowing construction to begin on UPF
while delaying work on CMRR-NF. Mello suggested,
however, that work on the project be stopped immediately. “Assuming the current rumors are true, the main thing now
is to stop additional expenditures immediately, mid-year,
rather than winding down the project gradually and
wasting even more money,” he said. “NNSA should focus
on making the existing LANL plutonium facility safe,
without adding capabilities, at the same time continuing its
process of abandoning CMR, which now has no remaining
long-term missions.”NNSA Bracing for Budget Woes

While NNSA officials haven’t said anything publicly
about the project, there has been a clear indication that the
FY2013 budget request would be lower than previous
projections. In comments to NW&M Monitor last month,
NNSA Principal Deputy Administrator Neile Miller
suggested that the agency would have to make do with less
month than expected; $7.95 billion had been projected for
the weapons program a year ago. “Lots of consideration
has been given now to a lot of things to try and formulate
a budget at lower amounts than we planned a year ago,” Miller told NW&M Monitor after her speech. “That’s the
Budget Control Act reality. Everyone from DoD to you
name the ‘D’ has needed to and has been reexamining
assumptions and priorities and program of work.”

POGO Calls for CMRR-NF to End

Such a decision would be just what the Project on Government
Oversight is recommending. Calling the project a “behemoth of overspending,” the watchdog group this
week urged the Administration and Congress to kill the
project over concerns about its price tag and what it said
were questions about its need in the current fiscal and
national security environments. “This facility is a poster
child for government waste,” POGO Senior Investigator
Peter Stockton said in a statement. “Why are we designing
a multi-billion dollar facility that has no clear mission?” While breaking no new ground, POGO’s report ticks off a
variety of issues facing the project that have made it a
potential target of budget cuts, including its ballooning
cost and NNSA’s spotty project management record,
reductions to the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile, as
well as seismic concerns related to its design. “Moving
forward with CMRR-NF completely defies logic and our
current budgetary realities,” POGO Investigator Mia
Steinle said. “It also runs contrary to U.S. nuclear strategy.”

POGO suggested that given the current needs of the
nation’s nuclear deterrent, it was not necessary to increase
pit production, which is one of the main arguments supporting
the facility, and it suggested that the facility’s
planned mission could be performed at other facilities
around the weapons complex at a much lower cost. “The
fact that CMRR-NF is counter to current nuclear strategy
should have been enough to halt design and construction
of the facility some time ago,” POGO said in the report. “Now that the U.S. budget is in such dire straits, it only
makes sense to cut such an expensive project before more
money is wasted.”

POGO said alternatives involving the existing CMR
facility, the first phase of the CMRR project—known as
the Radiological Laboratory/Utility/Office Building or
RLUOB—and the lab’s Plutonium Facility could accommodate
the missions currently planned for the Nuclear
Facility, suggesting that room in the Plutonium Facility
could be freed up by moving the facility’s Plutonium-238
refining mission to the Savannah River Site or Idaho
National Laboratory. “Given the likelihood of design and
construction problems at CMRR-NF because of DOE’s
past problems, it is highly risky for construction to go
forward,” POGO said. “It is apparent that less costly
alternative plans that do not involve a new building could
satisfy DOE’s and NNSA’s needs, if only the agencies
would give those plans serious consideration.”

A Precedent for Abandoning Projects?

POGO also noted that there is precedent for canceling
projects, noting that Congress cancelled the Clinch River
Breeder Reactor, Gas Centrifuge Enrichment Plant, the
New Production Reactor, and the Superconducting Super
Collider, each after construction had begun. “Given the
billion-dollar waste of these and other past projects,
CMRR-NF doesn’t seem like a promising investment,” POGO said. “But, construction has not yet begun on
CMRR-NF, so there is still time to avoid similar sunk
costs. RLUOB’s existence is not an argument for the
construction of CMRR-NF. Hopefully, Congress will
speak out against CMRR-NF sooner than later and save
billions of dollars.”